Coral reefs' vulnerability to global warming has already been established by researchers, but the fish living in the reefs are also at risk, James Cook University's Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies found.
"We have already seen episodes of mass die-off of corals as a result of warmer waters associated with global warming, the problem for specialist coral fish is that when the corals die, the fish have nowhere else to go," the centre's Philip Munday said.
Munday said there were some 4,000 fish species living in or around coral reefs, providing livelihoods and a major source of sustenance to an estimated 200 million people worldwide.
He said the problem with coral fish stemmed from the fact that when they bed, their eggs are swept out to sea and the baby fish then swims back to resettle on the reef.
"If refs have been extensively damaged or the compositionof their corals altered due to global warmig impacts,this proces of re-stocking the reefs with fish may be disrupted," he said.
"At the same tim, the babyfish are likely to be effected because of changes in water teperature and the acidification of the ocean."
Munday said some fish may migrate to cooler waters if tempertures around their reefs became too warm.
But he said this was not an option in Australia's Great Barrier Reef because there was nowhere for new coral to grow in the deep waters to the south of the giant reef, regarded by scientists as the world's largest living organism.
